ROUND 17: 🇦🇿 Azerbaijan
FORMULA 1 QATAR AIRWAYS AZERBAIJAN GRAND PRIX 2025
Circuit stats
- Circuit name: Baku City Circuit
- First Grand Prix: 2016
- Number of laps: 51
- Circuit Length: 6.003 km
- Race Distance: 306.049 km
- Lap record: 1:43.009 Charles Leclerc (2019)
- 2024 winner: Oscar Piastri
Warning, incoming Williams fanboying:
I would not have guessed but Baku seemed to be the ideal conditions for the Williams FW47 car. Sainz provisional pole in qualifying, but still ending up at P2 at the end of qualifying is one example. The other during the race Albon starting at 19th on the grid and moving up eight places to end the race at P11 (but with a penalty).
The other possibility (which I don’t even dare to hope), is that the Williams team have cracked the code on the FW47 to get Merc like performance out of it that we might see in future races. I don’t think this likely, but a man can dream.
Yeah, Williams seemed to be doing great here. Thanks for pointing out Albon, I didn’t notice that he made so many positions.
Could very much be that this track lent itself to Williams and the Racing Bulls, and the next ones will look different. If Williams really took a step forward as a whole that would be quite something (especially as no one is bringing upgrades for this year anymore at this stage).
It would, but its unlikely. Even Sainz in the post-race interview did not seem hopeful about a repeat performance with the races remaining.
And we know with Williams they never really did upgrades for FW47 (as its essentially their 2024 car) deciding instead to save their development budget for the post-rule-change 2026 Williams car.